Skyler Says It’s Time

Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler told reporters at City Hall he felt it was time, after more than eight years with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to leave and find work somewhere else. Skyler is heading to Citigroup to head up their communication operations, internally and externally, he said.

Surrounded by reporters in the Blue Room, Skyler declined to say if he was offered a position at another Bloomberg operation. (Countless aides have gone to Bloomberg L.P. or the charitable foundations Mr. Bloomberg uses to give away his massive fortune).

“I obviously spoke to the mayor many times about what I was planning to do,” said Skyler. “I felt like he was on my side during this whole process.”

Skyler’s departure this May will come only five months into Bloomberg’s hard-fought and controversial third term in office, which the mayor argued was needed in order for him to deal with the city’s financial crisis.

Skyler said as a public servant, there’s never a quiet, or opportune, time to leave public service.

“If you do this job and work for the city, there is never a good time to leave. There is always going to a phone call in the middle of the night and there is always going to be some issue that deserves your attention. And if I waited for the right time for when things are quiet, it would probably be some time at 12:01 on January 1, 2014. That’s the only time that would be a good time. Any other time is going to be based on the decision. I made the decision several months ago that when I identified the right opportunity, the right fit, that it would be time for me.”